So you’ve decided to recycle. You proudly rinse out your cans, flatten your Cheerios boxes, toss those paper towel tubes into your green "We Recycle" bin and roll it out to the curb for pick up. The giant truck comes by, some nice person picks it up and tosses it into the back of the truck …. And then what? Where does it go? Why is it that all of the sudden I can put all my recyclables into one bin when I spent the last decade meticulously separating my paper from plastic, my metal from my cardboard. Hold on to your horses, we’re off to see where your recycling goes…
Let’s start at the beginning – just what is single stream recycling? To put it simply, it’s a recycling process in which materials are collected all mingled together with no sorting required by individual recyclers.
After the recycling trucks have picked up your recycling they are sent to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) . Trucks unload all the materials onto conveyor belts where the material is pre-sorted. People pull off unacceptable materials, any trash and all cardboard.
A process called disk screen friction then sorts and separates all flat items from round items.
Cans and metal are then dropped down and under while paper is pushed up and over. Plastic items fall onto a new conveyor belt below and newspaper goes through to another hand sort before going on to the processing station.
At the processing station, air blowers, magnets and other automated equipment sort everything into holding bins by item where it is then baled and shipped to the manufacturer to create new products.
Visit the REWARDS FOR RECYCLING website for more information.
